Youth Eco-Feminist
Community Action Course.
The Youth Eco-Feminist Community Action Course is designed to help Adivasi and Dalit youth to dialogue on culture, Constitutionality and identity, and to engage with their natural resources through a gender-just lens. The course has been jointly developed by Dhaatri - A Resource Centre for Women and Children, Sakhi Trust, and Keystone Foundation. The current batch has a total of 15 youth hailing from Telangana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Gujarat. Most of them have already been working in their communities, and hope to expand their knowledge and develop new perspectives to aid their local actions. Through a 10-month long journey of praxis and learning course, the youth will visit field areas of several groups working on Adivasi and Dalit rights, women's rights, livelihood initiatives and cultural knowledge practices.
Sessions and Updates
This was followed by a visit to a Soliga hamlet passing through farms and coffee plantations. The status of their forest rights claims were also discussed before proceeding to ATREE’s field office. Their activities in mapping native species using scientific data and traditional knowledge, mapping and conservation of sacred groves and claims for habitat rights were also discussed. The importance of documenting the traditional knowledge and cultural practices of the indigenous communities for knowledge transfer to future generations and its value in acting as an evidence for the existence of a community was stressed upon. The participants were able to appreciate the need for the presence of adivasis at the policy and decision making levels in addressing their marginalisation and recognition of their rights.
This was followed by a visit to the parent organisation Sahaja Seeds, in which the participants learnt about how it emerged as a result of an extensive collection of seeds, the role and functioning of self-help groups through which they work and the difference between organic and natural farming. They also viewed more varieties of seeds and seasonal calendar based on seeds.
The participants were taken to a short trek on the last day in Keystone and were able to spot various native animals and birds in the early hours of the day.
The participants visited Chokkanalli which falls near the core zone of the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. They had a chance to discuss People and Nature Collective’s work with village elders who take classes for children on traditional knowledge, culture and biodiversity and their implementation of analog forestry.
In the safari in the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve, the participants spotted a leopard, elephants, deers and langurs among the many animal and bird species in the core zone. They also visited the elephant camp during the feeding hours and understood the care needed for rehabilitated elephants that cannot live in the wild on their own.
A panel discussion was held with the climate educators who described the educational status of women and reasons for drop-out during their schooling, shared what gives them happiness as teachers and reflected on their understanding of and vision for education.
The participants revisited the tenets of community radio, the work and reach of Radio Kotagiri and had the opportunity to visit the recording room where the software for broadcasting recorded and live content was demonstrated. The importance of creating a platform for voicing the views, documenting the culture and spreading information and awareness to the marginalized along with maintaining credibility from reliable sources of information was discussed.
Mr. Mohammad Raees conducted a session on dalits and hill sanitation work in which he elaborately deconstructed the fundamentals of caste hierarchy. He explained his stance that the outcasting of dalits is connected to the position of a toilet inside or outside a house/temple to whom doing the dirty work is relegated. He also maintained that in the hills, caste hierarchy can be observed through geographical locations of different castes divided between higher and lower elevations.
This was followed by a visit to the KMF Hospital in which Dr. Miriam explained the work of health volunteers which support Keystone’s public health interventions. She addressed various questions on the inaccessibility to healthcare, especially in case of emergencies, to adivasi hamlets in remote areas near Kotagiri, their mobile healthcare support and stressed on the value of empathy and affirmation to the efforts of caregivers in palliative care.
The bye laws of the company, quality standards and organic certification through a peer-reviewed participatory guarantee system (PGS) were discussed. The machinery for processing millets, two varieties of coffee and silk cotton were also shown. This was followed by a visit to one of the farms in the community’s neighbourhood which cultivated sustainably with crop diversity and a nursery which preserves and distributes native plant species.
The session on biodiversity conservation shed light on pollinators and different species of honey bees native to India as bee-keeping is one of the major traditional occupations of indigenous communities in the Nilgiris and one of the first focus areas during the formative years of Keystone. Research on pollinators, training on hygienic extraction and quality of honey, overharvesting and advocating for grasslands of the Nilgiris under the category of wetland conservation are some of their main activities. Their work on ecological restoration through replicating the indigenous Shola forests was displayed through the revival at Happy Valley which the participants visited. Their conservatory, apiary and nursery which was visited is also part of their efforts at conserving native species and restoring the ecology.
In the biodiversity wing ‘Biduru Hode’, the participants understood the different programmes on the sustainable collection of NTFPs, documenting the use of different parts of plants in consultation with village elders for customary rules and prescribed scientific inputs, advocacy for native species, conservation of grasslands and wetlands and long-term ecological monitoring especially important for climate change.
In the climate change wing ‘Jenugoodu’, different aspects of measuring, reporting and verifying (MRV) with respect to climate change, community-based indicators and the initiative of climate smart schools, installation of weather stations and training and implementation of analog forestry for gender just responses to climate change were discussed.
In the visit to the museum space of the People and Nature Collective, the participants viewed the seed collection, display of a variety of millets and discussed the institutional and community archiving of traditional knowledge for preservation and transfer to younger generations with the central question- who has the right on this knowledge?
The participants further learnt about the various organic farming techniques from the farmers themselves. They learnt the process of making Jeevamrutham (organic fertiliser) with dung, clay from the lake, jaggery, groundnut powder, neem leaves, and aloe vera.
Youth Course Participants who had earlier worked with Sakhi shared their experience. Through its advocacy, the organisation pushes for action on issues like relocation of mining-affected families, school dropouts, child labour, child marriages, electricity, and healthcare.
Youth Corner
Stories, experiences, and perspectives shared by the youth.